17. Farming 1995 - 2015

On Sheriffs Court Farm in the1990’s, the planting of the Autumn crops of oil seed rape and wheat was done at a leisurely pace. Rape had to be planted by the end of August  to get the best tonnage the following year. Often our problem with doing this, as the rape would be planted after a wheat crop, was that the wheat harvesting for that year often went into the second week of September. Wheat was planted towards the end of September and finished at the end of October to the beginning of November, weather permitting. It was not unusual at that time to still have a field not planted in December or even January, especially in a field that had late potatoes in it. By the time the potatoes had been harvested the ground could be so wet it could be weeks before  you could get on the ground to plant the wheat.

Our method of planting wheat was with a 3 metre wide combination drill, a PTO driven power harrow with a drill mounted on top of it. Not the quickest method for planting, but the machine did two jobs in one. With only me on the farm it suited us. After harvest there was a 2 to 3 week period where I would cultivate the ground where the 1st wheats were to be planted (1st wheat, a crop that follows a break crop such as rape, peas or potatoes). When the time was right, I would plant the wheat in this ground, doing about 8 to 10 hectares a day. When it came to the 2nd wheats (wheat following wheat) most of this ground was ploughed then planted. We employed a local contractor, Vic Ward, to do the ploughing. Nearly all of the 2nd wheat was planted on the marshes. I could only plant as much as Vic could plough in a day and on the marshes 6 hectares was a good day’s planting by this system.

Farming methods are always changing, as it did on Sheriffs Court around 2005. Farmers were encouraged to have their Winter wheats planted by the end of September to get the highest yield from them. They were encouraged to do the minimum amount of tillage to get the ground ready. To do this, most of the big farms in the area invested in big 300hp tracked tractors and big, multi-cultivating, corn drills. These drills, holding over a tonne of seed and with a planting width of  4 or 6 metres, could plant 60 hectares in a day.

Almost overnight our planting method was deemed to be too slow and too expensive. Charlie Quested, who farms at West Marsh, was contracted to plant all our crops until I retired.

A downside to this new planting system resulted in there being a huge problem with controlling Rye and Black grass in wheat crops. Spraying was having very little effect on Rye grass and no effect on Black grass. Farmers were planting their winter wheat in fields where there was a grass problem, before the seeds that had dropped that year had germinated. They would then germinate with the wheat. The only way then to control bad infestation was to desiccate it with Glysophate.

Terry Marsh

Originally published in the Monkton News (January 2026).